Bats Harbor New Deadly Respiratory Virus

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In June, a 60-year-old man checked into a hospital in Jedda,
Saudi Arabia, with a mysterious illness. The man, who had acute
pneumonia and failing kidneys, eventually died.

Now, the genetic sequencing of the virus behind his death
suggests it was a new one, and it came from Asian bats. The
findings, which were published Nov. 20 in the journal mBio, may
help scientists understand what makes the mysterious virus so
deadly.

"The virus is most closely related to viruses in bats found in
Asia, and there are no human viruses closely related to it," said
study co-author Ron Fouchier, of the Erasmus Medical Center in
the Netherlands, in a statement. "Therefore, we speculate that it
comes from an animal source."

In general,
human illness from animal diseases has been on the rise, but
bats are an especially deadly reservoir for viruses. In addition
to harboring rabies, bats may have been the initial hosts of
hemorrhagic fevers such as the Ebola virus and deadly brain
fevers such as the Nipah virus, scientists say.

Since the first case was reported, two other people have fallen
ill, including a man from London who was visiting neighboring
Qatar and another man in Saudi Arabia.

In the new study, the team sequenced the genome of the virus,
finding it resembles those of two other viruses normally found in
the flying mammals. The related viruses live in two other
bat species : Lesser bamboo bats (Tylonycteris
pachypus) and Japanese house bats (Pipistrellus
abramus), which live throughout Saudi Arabia and the Middle
East.

Because the scientists tested thousands of Saudi hospital
visitors and found no traces of antibodies to the disease, the
team believes the virus has newly emerged in humans.

The new genetic sequence also reveals the pathogen belongs to a
family of viruses
that includes both the common cold and severe acute respiratory
syndrome (SARS). SARS first emerged in Asia in 2002 and has
killed nearly 800 people as of 2003, according to the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention

The genetic sequence of the virus in two of the patients differs
enough that it's possible the two could have emerged from
separate bat colonies.

"We really need to understand whether these viruses are coming
from a single source or multiple sources," Fouchier said in a
statement.